


Poetry Worth 11 Minutes

by 0samjha



Category: Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF, Original Work, Star Trek, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Abandonment, Acrostic, Afterlife, Alliteration, Angst, Books, Bookstores, Break Up, Children, Colors, Communication, Complete, Crying, Curiosity, Death, Desire, Discrimination, Episode: s04e05 The Field Where I Died, Evolution, F/M, Filthy, Gen, Growing Up, Hatred, High School, Historical, Idealism, Inanimate Objects, Introspection, Language, Letters, Love, Love Letters, M/M, Memories, Nature, Newspapers, Open to Interpretation, Origins, POV Alternating, POV Inanimate Object, Parent-Child Relationship, Poetry, Priests, Privilege, Questioning, Questions, Rain, Reality, Realization, Reincarnation, Relationship(s), Resentment, Retirement, School, Self-Discovery, Slice of Life, Telepathy, The X-Files References, Unrequited Hate, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-18 03:01:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10607925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0samjha/pseuds/0samjha
Summary: Poems written in response to National Poetry Writing Month Challenge.





	1. Five Things I Want To Say To The Rain

You are darkness  
You are light  
You are a torment  
You are life  
You are beauty

You are stillness  
You are motion  
You are ugliness  
You are emotion  
You are purity

You are persistence  
You are transcendence  
You are universal  
You are my own  
You are precise

You are frustration  
You are captivation  
You are calamity  
You are celebration  
You are art

You are unpredictable  
You are eager  
You are greed  
You are fire  
You are incalculable

You are passionate  
You are soothing  
You are paradoxical  
You are transmundane  
You are substantiality  
You are eternal.


	2. exchanged for a phone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 5 - Write a poem from the point of view of an object in your room.

there really is no reason you should choose me  
after all there's not much poetry you can wring out of me  
but I know you never were a poet, or are you now?  
all I was witness to are your fandom geekouts  
I never thought, I don't think  
that we'd be so distant someday  
but the memories of the weeks you spent with me  
will forever linger in my circuitry.  
I sense you with your new companion now  
looking down at me  
you look at me again after half an eon  
I savour this last glance once again.


	3. four two three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 6 - 5 Steps To Build A Human Being.

I.  
what Birth   
has begun

ii.  
childhood, when  
the lines drawn  
and erased  
entwined inescapably.

iii.  
in the middle  
the colours fill  
oh, were it possible  
to imagine diversity  
describing all incidents;  
ideas express incapacity  
to such infinity.

iv.  
at senescence  
the paints have set  
an otherworldly glow  
lives within, perhaps  
each at their peaks.

v.  
death  
must end


	4. attempt at pathos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 7 - Write 5 stanzas where each stanza begins with 'cry like'.

cry like  
I am, wondering why on world health day  
am I assigned a theme so similar  
to depression, today  
it is fate, perhaps  
for me to find   
some reason to grin through the tears.

cry like  
when the revelation you share your prompt  
with .6 billion people   
and wonder how many of them  
have cried already  
leads you to calculate about thrice more  
than you write.

cry like  
your twisted mind delivers fun in the most morbid of situations  
but when asked for it  
stumped, it aestivates  
meekly asking you if you'd mind  
changing your birthday for a day or so.

cry like  
you're in agony for the words inside you   
twisting to get out  
or you've no idea where to begin the next time from  
possibly both and many more are equally true  
and you end your search at the fact that you're ending it.

cry like  
you're contriving some profound thought  
some startling observation, a parting shot  
that makes people like your attempts at a poem  
and aren't settling for that pitiable pun   
that isn't applicable anywhere except Facebook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a poet-specific prompt dated April 7.


	5. x-files

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 8 - The last line of your favourite poem is the first line of your poem for today.

in the sleep of death  
there are  
no friend, nor foe  
to burn  
the thought you spare  
for beloved  
wishing you could warn  
forever begins  
after the glimpse of  
thorns placed  
on the grass in the field where  
I died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First line from Emily Bronte's Sleep Brings No Joy To Me.


	6. just a slice of residual frustration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 9 - Question.

you did not just ask me that!  
I'm a curious person.  
I ask too many questions,  
I'd been told for ages.  
laughing it off, I'd always silently ask  
if it wasn't simply the lack of inquisitive people  
that led to lowering of thresholds  
and me mislabelled meddlesome.  
until one day  
it didn't matter anymore  
that day and today  
my questions haven't dried  
but now  
they do not leave my lips anymore.  
contrary to what's in vogue  
let me warn you, dear reader  
if you find yourself taking the call to question to heart  
beware, step back.  
for this world of mine cannot bear  
honest scrutiny.


	7. some catharsis is better than none

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 10 - Write a love letter to something you hate.

hatred and love,  
supposedly two sides of the same coin.  
the coin which seems lost to me  
but once, yes, I did hate  
time has washed the sting away  
I remember, though  
I savour the way my taunts flow easily  
at the idea of piercing you.  
I'm glad at the one bit of undiluted emotion  
you've always wrung from me  
me, the one who always  
views the world in probabilities  
you're my one absolute  
the one black in the seas of gray.  
I console myself on endless nights  
with thoughts of you  
I did prove the Victor, you see  
except for the way I preserve you  
in the mustiest room of my soul  
you are the source of my drive  
I see that now.  
in this analysis of what you mean to me  
I especially adore the way I know  
that I'll never be the foulest I've ever met.  
that honour, of course, is reserved for you.


	8. unbearable silence / hear me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 11 - In a maximum of 50 words, write a poem titled "Why Humans Speak".

mimicry is how  
babies acquire communication  
which seems the case in  
many adults yet  
language is vital;  
to exchange thoughts  
to express emotion  
and because  
to be silent is to lose  
as cerebral cortex is thus equipped  
in the course of evolution  
we mumble our way through life.


	9. we who we sense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 12 - Begin your poem with the phrase "I come from".

I come from the land of white snows and green valleys  
okay, alright, I don't  
but snows and seas sound much cooler  
than the plainness of my city, don't they?

I come from the land of myths and legends  
which exist in my stories  
the place of my origin, after all  
is much more fantasy than fact.

I come from the day before, a month from now  
the strings of past and future entwine  
to create this entity  
which is and isn't.

I come from within you  
the idea of me in your mind -  
is it any less real  
than the reality of my existence?


	10. take your time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 13 - Newspaper Headlines

thought the editor  
on the last night  
of the job of forty years  
it isn't as if people read as they did  
in the times of my first fumbling phrases  
wish I could savour the days  
soak in them a little while  
see the name in print again  
after thirty nine summers  
who glances at these tiny prints  
these absconded murderers, these murdered lovers  
these unfunded projects, these unexpected fires  
not a whit of attention paid to them  
who are these people? where do they go?  
having never found the answers in musing thus  
the editor clicked the pen, mind made up.  
\---  
with a grin on her face and a cup in her hand  
she picked up her paper for the first perusal  
'the assistant editor of this newspaper was fired last night as per latest reports'  
met her eyes on page 11.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [adapted from an apocryphal joke]


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 14 - Write an Acrostic poem.

calm down  
on to your safe place  
never letting go  
the fears you feel  
inspire, rationalize, analyze  
no looking back after today  
uplift self and smile, once  
emerge fresh and free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: Continue.


	12. Professor Charles Francis Xavier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 16 - Write a poem from the point of view of your favourite fictional hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I'm writing this poem, I realize that I adore this character far too much to be able to do justice to it.

the dramatic moments  
aren't the ones that stand out  
in the painting of lives  
there's fire, brilliant and scorching  
there's colours beyond description; a void  
but there isn't any part untouched by  
thoughts  
that's what people are  
no poetic justification  
for me  
except for a greater good whose  
existence is an illusion  
perpetuated  
by me I know  
what they do not acknowledge  
redemption is impossible  
empathy, inconceivable  
whom shall I beg  
to remove this blinding insight  
to see all and be able to do so little  
but the alternative?  
to see nothing?  
a phase more excruciating I cannot recall  
as I meet Magnus once again  
in this tableau we're locked in  
I hear the buzzing, this incessant chatter  
a stauncher companion to me than myself  
and read the painting of my life.


	13. name not specified

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 17 - Write about yourself.

she writes in darkness  
words flow easier then  
perhaps assured of her identity's secrecy  
those moments of conviction  
that this world of hers is but a dream  
crafted solely by her  
crystallize less often now  
her intense self-awareness  
not fear, not vulnerability  
colours these words   
pauses her mind,   
deletes these phrases  
she's too much and not enough  
sometimes in the same conversation.  
she knows herself far too well  
to tell this story from her eyes  
calculating none would get the poem then.  
she wonders if this prompt isn't simply  
gauging our ability to showcase ourselves  
and bats the thought away  
she ignores about forty thoughts per minute  
give or take a couple two.  
she views herself as a patchwork curtain  
functional more than aesthetic  
wearing temporarily the garb of semi-starving pseudo-poet,  
she blinks and is assured of her place  
if a bit puzzled what  
to do with these flashes of ideas  
that cover her so thoroughly  
making breathing impossible  
or maybe that is when she's truly herself  
is the dream ever truer than reality?  
she walks, wide-eyed  
a straight font in the sea of italics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so easy,  
> To say it to a crowd  
> But it's so hard, my love,  
> To say it to you out loud
> 
> \- Florence + The Machine


	14. Ancient Dirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 18 - Dirt.

Reminded of the Aguilera song  
Stuck in my head today  
I chuckle inwardly  
A human trashcan of thoughts  
Possessed of a rather poor lid  
Off on a tangent about  
Our collective thoughts about pollution,  
About purity

Won't use that word; I'm not allowed to  
That's only fair I suppose  
After all they did impose upon you   
Our ideas  
Our understanding  
Our cruelty  
For centuries, wasn't it?

Sometimes I earnestly wonder  
If the blood of my forefathers  
Isn't behind at least a little of my obsession with cleanliness  
Or is it entirely me in my essence, shining through the cracks  
Some questions are worth more unanswered;  
Our differences express better in silences.  
But I hope that Someday  
We'll laugh at ideas of dirt together.


	15. of course they made us write about school

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 19 - School.

the best thing I can do with today's prompt is to take it to mean a school  
of fish  
and go from there  
perhaps adding a sly nod to my technique  
look, how I navigated the hot coals today

the second-best thing I can do  
is ignore it  
start fretting about tomorrow's exam a little earlier.

exasperation  
and a flare of blinding defensiveness  
coupled with a desperate desolation -   
my knee-jerk responses to this post  
tell me I should probably repress a little less.

there's only one school I have ever known.  
to pretend this is anything  
other than pointed commentary  
is a lie of the gravest magnitude even I wouldn't attempt.

I don't really remember my school.  
The places where the memories used to live are blank  
I've deleted  
repressed  
locked  
forgotten

Everything but the way I feel when  
I'm forced to think of you these days

Sometimes I see a flash of red and white in crowds  
And pause, trying to recall  
What exactly about that combination disturbs me so.  
But then, that's a really peculiar combination anyway.

This is way too much introspection for one poem  
The one complicated relationship in my life  
but most of the complications are as  
I'm not sure if there's anyone on the other side   
To have a relationship with  
Have I always have been knocking on empty rooms?

You inculcated in me the need, almost  
To believe in something greater than just myself  
You crafted me as you saw fit  
I wonder if anyone can remain standing  
After discovering the feet of clay  
Of the one infallible object of their lives.

I live in constant fear  
Were anyone to take your values to heart  
You'll be the first to break that idealism,  
The world follows then.

But the worst of your crimes  
the only one that lingers constantly  
I am never sure  
If anyone's even listening  
when I shout  
I scream  
I doubt you hear

no, not doubt  
I know you do not

You're a bit responsible for who I am,  
Out of everything i could've been.  
I just don't know  
If to thank you  
Or to curse you  
is the appropriate course of action.

And yet, I realize I'm not angry, not really  
Not merely as it's meaningless to be angry with a part of yourself  
But because   
What does a volcano care about a tree?

In another universe  
I'd end with   
'A part of me still roams your grounds  
Eternally caught in the moment  
Of complete wonder and innocence  
The purest part of me'

This is not that world.


	16. Enterprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 20 - If I ruled the world

if i ruled the world  
music would flow out of leaves  
chocolates would rain from the sky  
and ours would be a telepathic race.

if i ruled the world  
travel would be the norm  
no books sentenced to the pyre  
and discourses ubiquitous.

if i ruled the world  
justice wouldn't take decades  
nature not merely a tool  
people not prosecuted for all their diversities.

if i ruled the world  
I'd make Star Trek a reality  
and quit; to explore  
where no one has gone before.


	17. how to discover your parents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 21 - Write a 'How To' poem.

 

Check the manufacturing date  
Listed as 'Year of Birth'  
Find out their childhood was spent in which state  
And click open your browsers

Cross-link the date and place  
And don the research cap  
An idea then you'll have of their headspace  
And a step ahead you'll be

Observe the food they choose  
So often at odds with what it should be  
Glance at them when they snooze  
When they aren't waiting for you to come home

Find out if and how many friends  
They still possess  
Notice how they keep an eye on the latest trends  
And when laughs bubble out of them

Lastly you must not miss this step  
For this is the most rewarding of all  
Steel yourself, do your prep  
And talk to them as they deserve.


	18. Holistic Writers' Block

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 22 - The last line of the last poem you wrote is the first line for today's poem.

And talk to them as they deserve.  
The voice of each of us  
Has once or another  
Fallen silent  
Some term it conscience  
Some merely sociability  
But in the charter of heavenly duties  
Surely a clause, often overlooked  
Compels that basic human compassion  
To come to the forefront  
Once in every lifetime.


	19. Hephaestion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 23 - Write a poem from the point of view of a historical figure.

In the arms of Euphrates  
The swirling waters show visions  
A glorious future, entrenched in collective memory  
I see the existences the Gods intend for you  
For we are one and the same, are we not?  
I know not what the Fates plan for me  
Perhaps nothing at all; you command me entirely  
And yet, the Boy King will the crowning moment  
The point where I choose to halt time.  
I do not walk in your shadow  
In the fields of Mieza  
I had already found myself  
A thousand times.


	20. Verisimilitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 24 - Afterlife.

'your next birth is scheduled  
one hundred and nineteen years hence.'  
pronounced the priest  
'shall i be a prince?'  
queried the anxious soul.  
'I'm afraid that's all my inner sight  
can allow me at present-'  
the clink of gold has a distinctive quality to it  
have you ever noticed?  
'wait a bit;  
it shall be something mightier  
A King!  
A King of a glorious land!  
A King for eternity!'  
grateful obeisances, many exhilarations  
the entry of a grim lad, glint of a silver cross  
unmistakable and unmissed,  
marked by  
'what will become of me when i die?'  
'My son, you shall enjoy eternal rest, of course  
Why, do you doubt it?'


	21. Salacity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 25 - Each line of your poem must begin with the same letter.

sybilant, seductive, it caresses you  
smoothly twisting its unfurling petals  
silently harkening to a glistening future  
starlight lights your way, tonight  
staggering, you stumble onto the threshold  
softly glowing signboard proclaiming  
'secondhand bookshop: 24 × 7'  
sighing, you surrender to its suasive embrace.


	22. Embodiment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 26 - Open page 30 of the first book you see; the first sentence is the first line of your poem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some violence to a fictitious entity implied.

the subcutaneous tissue feels lax  
this beautiful symbol of ourselves  
collapses under the strain of  
your discomfort  
my frustrations  
your refusals  
my silences  
we tug this gift in two directions  
it scatters in twelve.  
the creation of our unity  
heralded with such joy  
decays, now  
we watch it wither within our eyes  
and shrug, strike the match  
let the funeral fires reach the sky  
let the body of Love fetter us no longer.


	23. Declination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 27 - Your favourite colour.

glancing at my turquoise curtains  
my gaze fell onto the cerulean painting  
I bought to highlight my azure walls  
and frame my indigo curio.  
Resuming my search for the perfect navy owl pendant  
I found the prettiest teal ring  
If only it were that nice shade of ultramarine.  
Closing my slate laptop  
I clicked my sapphire pen  
'Why do I feel so blue?'  
Thus began my diary entry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternative Title: 50 Shades of Blue :D


	24. maybe she's born with it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 29 - An advertising tagline is the title of your poem.

maybe it's the time she spent  
collecting extra samples  
shoes squelching in the mud  
while you ordered samosas.

maybe it's the care she took  
that every employee   
went home safe  
while you were off at five.

maybe it's her vision  
she took pains to polish  
and discuss at every opportunity  
while you re-printed reports.

maybe it's the passion  
that shines through her actions  
and makes allies of opponents  
while you assume conspiracies.


	25. Art is an Explosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 30 - Endless.

the feel of your soft feet  
as i take them in my hands once again  
your quiet mumble  
how this is exactly like years long past  
this memory i shall carry with me  
until i mutter the same  
in a half-awake whisper someday.

the smell of newly hatched leaves  
the crunch of a well-trodden path  
the glint of the sun as it returns your grin  
and the click of the shutter of your mind  
can ever the veracity of your joy be questioned?

shuffling through mum's old jewellery  
you coyly try a favourite  
the sharp stab of deja vu accompanied  
by a piercing pain  
etches this moment too clearly  
in the landscape of your mind;  
after you meet the necklace  
years from now, you will wince  
and soothe a phantom bruise.

these memories are endless;  
pictures frozen in time  
single, fleeting moments of perfection  
companions to people long passed by  
a little bit of ourselves we exchange  
in return for some  
different currency to tide us by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of quotes are modified from Deidara's.

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all responses are welcome. Please consider taking a moment to tell me how, exactly, I suck. :)


End file.
